esrp final essay

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When playing basketball or any sport that involves playing against another team, competition is involved. Competing against someone can be for several reasons and have many different outcomes. You could be trying to get into shape and by playing against someone who is more fit you raise your fitness level because you have to compete harder. You could also be doing it because you have a desire to win, by winning you gain self-confidence and boosts how you think and play. The other alternative is because you hate to lose, and when competing against someone your hate to lose is so great that you would get to the peak of competitiveness to prevent this from happening.

For my invention mob, my group and I decided why some people get so competitive and why they begging to get physical with other players and why? A few of these reasons are because players do it to get into a better physical condition, and others do it because they love to win or they hate to lose. By going to the rec center and watching people work out, play basketball, and just spectate others we were able to gain enough data to begin to hypothesize why people are so competitive, and the variables of why this is so. The gender was a key variable of why someone was so competitive, another was which spots they have played and what spots they were playing and we could visibly see them becoming competitive.

Males were more often more competitive than females and this could have been for multiple reasons. First off I believe this is so because men have a more underlining genetics that make them more competitive than women. Men hate to lose and even for centuries have hated to lose. When a man lost to someone else it makes him feel weak, less superior, and men want to be the most superior person in the surrounding area. When playing basketball I begin to become competitive because I was playing better, and when I play better I feel better about myself and the spectators also realize that I am a good baller and that in return also makes me feel better. The genetic side that could be played into this equation is that men just hate to lose and there is no answer why. Men hate to lose, and women for that matter just hate to lose, nobody likes losing. When we entered the rec and starting asking men why they were competitive, they said it was because they had a desire to win and hated to lose.

Women on the other hand did not give that answer, their more common answer was to get into shape and become more fit. When playing against someone who is taller, bigger, or faster than you, you are going to have to step up your game if you are going to beat them. By stepping up your game and becoming more competitive you begin to try harder and you begin to compete on a different level. By competing on this different level that was higher than yours to begin with, you become more physically fit. This we could see and was a common answer we heard from women when obtaining data from the rec center. Besides trying to become more fit another common answer for women was because it was a great way to brake from routine and relieve some stress that was building from all the class work and college life.

Other pieces of data we were looking at was what sport or activity they were doing at the time or what they have done in the past in high school or in earlier years in college. When asking males we saw that they were more competitive in sports like wrestling and football versus basketball and baseball. I could suspect this because both wrestling and football involve more physical contact than does baseball, soccer, and basketball. Physical contact is such a movement when competing with someone else because this shows full dominance over your opponent. Spectators are able to see this; you have just witnesses this and this morale booster has just made you more competitive. Other factors that played into a less contact sport were ball movement and style of shots. Good ball dribbling skills shows that you are a better player than they are and you begin to get cockier and more competitive. However, the key element of what made some get so competitive during a sport was how much they could get into contact with them, and legally hit them. Sports that made women more competitive were basketball being one of the highest. Volleyball was one of the lowest and I can only presume was because basketball was more of an endurance based sport than volleyball. Softball was another common answer of why girls played sports and this could be because of swinging a bat is a good way to let out steam and be a bit of a stress reliever.

However this data was not so easy to get, we went to the rec for about a week and we had our ups and downs while doing this invention mob. When we first tried to get data we as a group of four tall, large looking guys would go solely up to one person and would begin to shoot questions at them, and the questionee would then get intimidated and either give us bonehead no good data or just reject our us. We realized this in the first few people we asked, so from there we quickly changed our method of questioning. When approaching someone singly or in a pair we were able to get more genuine answers and the questionee even seemed interested in what we were asking; when this happened we began to feel more comfortable asking questions and it became more of a conversation than just asking someone a question a trying to get a basic answer. Another big factor of when we were trying to obtain data is who we asked. When approaching a group we were able to receive better data and it would seem like this data was more useful to use, and this could have been because of the intimation factor was low when a group of friends were answering the same questions together. One sector we were not able to receive much data from was women who were by themselves. When we went through the process of asking what sports they played, the competitive level they competed at, and why they did it, we would get simple one word answers that were not much help to us. This could be because what girl wants to tell us that she is going to the rec center and working out or playing ball so that she could get into a better physical condition and look more attractive to others. We believe that this was the case but no women were willing to tell a couple of guys this, which were doing research, so they could get data and then they could present this in front of others. Guys on the other hand were more willing to give us the answers if we asked the right kind of guys.

Guys who were waiting to get into the next basketball game were willing to help us out, however, if they had just gotten done with a basketball game they were to tired and uninterested to tell us why they lost and why there completion level seemed to be so low. Other guys who flat out told us no were guys working out by themselves, or had one other person lifting weights with them. This could because they did not feel comfortable telling us that they were working out because maybe they were trying to look more appealable to others. However a large group of guys working out were willing to tell us that they were working out to look better and this could be because they felt so comfortable having multiple guys around who were thinking the same thing.

Men go to the gym and play sports because they want to have that competitive atmosphere in their life, and men hate to lose and by going to the rec center and playing sports that can put themselves into an atmosphere where they compete with someone and can have that feeling of winning and that they are better than someone else. Women on the other hand are not entirely like men, they play sports to relieve stress and to break from the college life, or to become a more fit, healthier human being. Getting this data was not easy, we had to change our method several times and also who we asked but we had to keep it balanced and ask a different genre of people so that the data was not totally one sided. For end result, we were able to get a balanced amount of data from several different sources and were able to present this in front of our English 101 class.

More than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening, the gap between the poor and the rich is growing. As this gap continues to grow so does the advancements of technology in more developed countries, but is there a connection between inequality and technology? As America continues to develop more and more we are able to put forth funds to research different technology. We can find alternative renewable energy sources, make super computers, and so much more, and all of this can either make money and can help us spend less money. This extra money can go back into researching better technology; this cycle has been going on since the industrial revolution. But as we become more developed and have these advancements there are other countries that cannot do this, they are stuck in a rut, they cannot research technology because they have no money to do this, and they fall further and further behind. If this continues and developing countries never get up to speed then many consequences will follow.

Even though America is in a recession and slowly climbing out of it we still have the ability to find new ways of making American lifestyle better. Phones, computers, and video game consoles are becoming more and more every year, the pieces that go into these products can be seen everywhere, microprocessor are now in super computer that are ran by government officials. Circuit boards in video games are also in street lights, and any other electrical ran device, but why can we not find this kind of technology in third world nations? Why do most American households have clean water, running heat and electricity and other do not? Information Asymmetry and Information Sharing is an article that focuses the access to technology and whether or not countries are sharing technological advances with others. America has become so greedy for money that they are not willing to share it with other nation; they would have other nations live in poverty that share advancing technology. However not all countries are like this, rich countries like the US, UK, and Germany take the burden of poor developing nations and try to lessen the wealth gap between poor and rich countries. TIPGs are transnational intergenerational public goods, and they generate benefits for following generations, they are given to developing countries from richer developed countries.

These richer countries are trying to help developed third world countries however 22,000 children die each day due to poverty, and this could all change if we put forth more effort on helping others. Now making the whole world one giant communist nation is not my idea, but if we can put forth a little more time, effort and money; then other countries can leave a little better lifestyle, there country could become as developed as ours. If this were to happen then many positives could come from this. First education would rise, if there is a demand for researching technology then there will be for higher education. If there is no change in development and there are only jobs that are available for workers with little to no education, which would mainly be assembly line jobs, then what would happen if no change happened for the next fifty years? One thing that I think would happen is that technology would be so more advance than it is today and that assembly lines would be self-function. What I mean by this is, when automobiles were first being made the whole operation was done by hand, there was little help by machinery. If you look at a car assembly now, robot are now doing what humans did before, they replaced manual labor. If this continues and technology gets more and more advance then manual labor will no longer be required, and could possibly be done solely by essentially robots.

Another positive outcome from helping developing countries increase their knowledge is increasing infrastructure and the standard of living. Third world countries are nothing like what we see in America. Houses may be four tin walls with a time thatched roof, the roads dirt, getting water means going down to the river, there is no supermarket where they can just stop by to pick up their necessities. The first step of helping third world countries develop is to develop their technology. That could be by having a consistent supply of energy flow through their village and build upon that, find what resources are near and make an economy based upon it, have them start manufacturing products and start an economy.

Besides looking large scale you can also look small scale, in America you can see the inequality gap between the rich and the poor. Most of the country’s wealth lies in the richest one percent of the population. About thirteen percent of America’s population is living in poverty, why is this so. Living in poverty you do not have the luxuries or even the necessities that other Americans have. This could be a result of too much technology. Manual labor has been because of robots, robots require no pay, supervision, health benefits, much of which are required by having human workers. If manufactures were to give back some of manual labor jobs back to American workers then I believe there would be less of a wealth gap between the rich and the poor.

If we continue to expand on technology then many unfavorable consequences will fall upon America and other countries. American workers could be replaced by robots and there will no longer be a need for manual labor. The jobs that are being out sourced could also be replaced hurting workers in other countries. Also countries that are still being developed will never be able to live in the same technological advance world as other more developed countries. They will continue to fall further and further behind unless more advanced countries helped them. If these developing nations never learn of the technology that exists then their population will never have an increase in standard of living.

Not finished still need to do more research.

visual essay

“When the average American consumes 43 times as much as the average African, we’ve got to think that consumption is an issue. It’s not just about population.” Jason Clay. Now why is it that Americans can consume so much more than the average African? Why is there such and inequality gap between us and them? “Them”, which could include a huge range of nations, from the African continent to parts of south East Asia, and even into Russia. Is it because of our technology? Is there a connection between technology and inequality? I believe the answer is yes.

By looking large scale we can see that America is far better off than most African countries, and we can also agree that America has far better technology than most African countries. Americans have a far better standard of living than them too; the Average American family has one if not two cars, electricity, running clean water. Now a days most teenagers own a cell phone, probably an iPod and some even a personal laptop. Now in Africa they have electricity in some countries by half the time it is temporary and hardly any families own a car let alone running water. America has all the natural resources to produce these things and many more; that is why America has grown to be the super power that is known to be. And since we are a super power we can do many more things that other nations cannot.

But what is the connection between technology and inequality? We know that America is far better off than most countries, but why? When something new is invented it replaces another. In America some jobs are done by robot, the robot has replaced the working man. Manual labor is slow and costly, so why pay someone to do something when you can build a robot to do it faster, longer, and for free? Robots replaced working men saving companies money and creating a gap between the rich and the poor. This gap is the inequality gap; on one side you have the payers, the people who pay someone or build something to make another thing. The other side is the payees, the ones who can do something a robot cannot do. Now since we no longer have a need for manual labor, why continue to outsource? That is why Africa has no growth because there is no need for their skill, and since they are getting no income they cannot build schools to increase education and this loop continues, and so does the inequality gap increases. Now this is a large scale basis, we no longer need to pay someone pennies to do something because we have technology that can do it for us. But what happens when this happens locally? Well that has already begun to happen. Auto companies use massive robots to put pieces of cars together and the pieces that cannot be put together by robot are done so by human. But will technology continue to increase and replace the people who still preform manual labor?

Now we have this ability to do so much in our country while Africa continues to get further and further away from us. But is there anything that we can do? We can give something back to the world, some company can take a little out of their pocket and build a school in Africa, that way they have a better chance of living the same life as somebody in America. Now I do believe that this being done, but not at the speed that it could be done. I think we should stop replacing humans with robots, and we should start helping other so they can live a better life.

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